nk497 writes: While it's definitely time to start thinking about IPv6, it's not time for most to move up to it, argues Steve Cassidy, saying most can turn it off in Windows 7 without causing any trouble. Many network experts argue we're nearing network armageddon, but they've been saying that for years."This all started when Tony Blair was elected. The first time. Yep, thatâ's how long IPv6 has been around, and it’s quite a few weeks ago now." He says smart engineering has avoided many of the problems. "Is there an IPv6 “killer app” yet for smaller networks? No. Is there any reason based on security or ease of management – unless you’re running a 100,000-seat network or a national-level ISP – for you to move up to it? No. Should you start to do a bit of reading about it? That’s about the stage we’re truly at, and the answer to that one is: yes," he says.

Network engineers said (briefly) 12 years ago that "The internet is in danger of running out of space very quickly if nothing changes".

Then NAT came along and, for better or worse, it was widely deployed. Better in that it dramatically extended the useful life of IPv4 through dramatic address conservation. Worse in that we now have an entire generation of network engineers that not only fail to understand the advantages of a peer to peer end-to-end networking model, but, somehow have managed to turn terms l